Fedigrow

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To discuss how to grow and manage communities / magazines on Lemmy, Mbin, Piefed and Sublinks

founded 6 months ago
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One of the advantages of a decentralized platform like Lemmy is the ability to create parallel communities on the same topic. "You don't like how a community is being moderated? Go to another instance and start a new community!" (with or without blackjack and hookers)

However, I think this is also a double-edged sword. The creation of multiple communities on the same (or similar) topics can also fragment the userbase, leading to very sparsely populated communities.

Example: I am open to being wrong, but I don't currently see a need for five distinct Harry Potter sublemmies with (nearly) identical names:

There are also some other miscellaneous HP related communities:

I suspect that many of these were created during the 2023 Rexxit, when instances were less stable, and there was a temporary period of massive growth.

Now that Lemmy is more stable, would the moderators of the above communities consider some form of cooperative consolidation? If not, what distinct purpose do the separate communities serve?

A couple arguments in favour of consolidation: (credits to @Ashyr@sh.itjust.works and @otter@lemmy.ca)

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/11171955

I think until there’s some tool or system that helps collate all the information out here, fragmentation is detrimental to growth.

I’m not going to copy and paste the same comment with every mirrored post.

So sometimes commenting feels like a waste of time.

Centralizing helps ensure that there’s vibrant, consistent discussion which is what Lemmy should be about.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/18388026

I like this because people showing up to those communities might think that topic doesn’t have activity on Lemmy, when it actually does.

I sometimes think that unmoderated communities should be closed, and just be left and locked with a pointer to the active one. In case an issue arises with the active one, they can still be unlocked and used as back up.

The next question is, of course "Which instance should we consolidate to?"

  • !harrypotter@lemmy.world is currently the largest sub, but also the largest instance, and moving off of the largest instance would be good for the Fediverse as a whole.
  • !harrypotter@literature.cafe seems appropriate, given that Harry Potter is, well, a book. Large sub on a small instance.
  • !harrypotter@lemm.ee is a small sub on a large instance.
  • !harrypotter@feddit.nl is very small, but European. (Might feddit.uk be an option?)
  • !harry_potter@diagonlemmy.social is also an option, but risky given the fragility of the instance. Could blue_berry provide some assurances that the instance will be stable for the foreseeable future, and perhaps improve the bus factor of the instance?

My hunch is that a stable, medium-sized instance would be best. What are your thoughts? Is consolidation worth a try?

If nothing else, the experiment could serve as a test for whether or not consolidation is effective in boosting engagement and discussion.

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A few ideas from the top of my head

  • Flairs that can be allowed to filter content in a community
  • Major online communites (can be subreddits, or other communities) moving to Lemmy
  • Reddit removing old.reddit
  • Reddit banning people using VPNs (already happening, see !reddit@lemmy.world )
  • Lemmy becoming the reference source of knowledge for a certain domain

Second point is probably crucial, but I don't see any major subreddit wanting to move here. StarTrek is the exception more that the rule.

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Perhaps after some amount of time having announced themselves over in !newcommunities@lemmy.world and !communitypromo@lemmy.ca, or...I don't know if there are communities for instances (the fediverse communities, presumably?), but likewise for them?

The combination of a promotional space and discussion for helping grow communities/instances could help ensure there's always some activity keeping this community visible to those seeking help.

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I’ve searched for older Lemmy posts on Google just to see if they are getting indexed and I don’t think most are? Can anyone else confirm. I think if Lemmy showed up in more google searches like Reddit it would bring new users

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I noticed the new betas have the ability to upload video clips. I think this has been a huge missing feature that Reddit and other social media platforms have

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I'm not gonna lie, sometimes it feels a bit lonely. I try to post on a few generic communities

Sometimes I can be the only poster for a few weeks. Makes me requestion the relevance of posting at all. I started posting to !pics@lemmy.world recently just because at least my posts are widely seen, and other people post there as well.

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submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Blaze@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/fedigrow@lemm.ee
 
 

Small post to ping a few people who might have interesting insight on the questions discussed in this community.

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Probably a very polarizing question.

On the one hand, having most of the users and communities on LW causes technical issues (see this post), and also gives the LW staff too much power over Lemmy as a whole.

On the other hand, with 18k MAU on LW out of 47k (https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/), every community listed there has a much higher chance of visibility compared to an alternative hosted on another instance

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When you look at https://beehaw.org/communities, you can see that there are only a few communities, but they are diverse enough to cover most of the topics you would have to discuss on the Internet.

I sometimes think that could be a model we could try to replicate across several instances:

It would allow to aggregate people around a few core communities and avoid dispersion and fragmentation. Of course, it would need some agreements in the community, and some people would probably want to keep their community as "the main one" opposed to the other, but that could still be valuable.

What do you think?

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I'm mostly thinking about LW communities where nobody posts but which have active counterparts on other instances

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